The Ballerina Mindset: How to Protect Your Mental Health While Striving for Excellence

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Learn how to thrive in intense, competitive environments with these secrets from one of America's premiere ballerinas--and get a sneak peek at what her life is really like. Ballet may look glamorous and effortless to audience members, but it requires grueling discipline. It's a competitive and physically and mentally demanding career that combines elite athleticism, artistry, and performance. Not only do dancers rehearse for six to eight hours a day before performing at night, but they also must make it all look easy! As a principal ballerina with New York City Ballet and a one-time Broadway star--not to mention a mother of three and an MBA student--Megan Fairchild is all too familiar with these challenges. In The Ballerina Mindset, she shares all the wisdom she's learned from her nearly two-decade career, drawing upon her own experiences to show us how she learned to overcome challenges ranging from stage fright to negative feedback to a packed calendar to weight management--and how we can do the same. Inspiring, warm, and revelatory, The Ballerina Mindset is the perfect how-to guide for dancers, athletes, artists, and anyone struggling to stay sane in a high-pressure environment.

Reviews

Encouraging and full of common-sense advice, Fairchild's book will help readers trying to fulfill their true potential. Even those who aren't pursuing ballet will find it helpful.
Library Journal

A compendium of hard-won wisdom . . . Fairchild provides type A readers eminently practical and practiced advice for dancing ahead in life without the drama.
Publishers Weekly

Fairchild has struggled with anxiety, self-doubt, and the crush of external criticism. She discusses all of this, and more, with wit, openness, and a bracing straightforwardness in this slim, well-written volume of essay-like chapters, in which she confronts both the challenges and the rewards of being a dancer at one of the worlds great ballet companies.
Fjord Review

Author Bio

Megan Fairchild is a principal dancer with New York City Ballet. After moving from Utah to New York City at the age of sixteen to study ballet full-time, she was offered an apprenticeship with NYCB, and was promoted to principal-the highest rank-just three years later. In 2014, she took a temporary leave from NYCB to play the lead role, Miss Turnstiles, in the Broadway musical On the Town. She is also the host of the advice podcast Ask Megan, a brand ambassador for Cole Haan, and an MBA student at NYU's Stern School of Business.